Voices From The Heart of Gotham: A New Generation’s Struggles for a Racially Just Society

Guttman Community College Undergraduates' Presentation at the Oral History Society Conference in London Metropolitan University (July 2022)
Still Fighting for a Victory Against Racism at Home
Shaday Barrett, Samantha Hernandez, and Bashir Juwara
During World War II, Civil Rights leader A. Philip Randolph organized the Double V Campaign, demanding victory against fascism abroad and against racism at home. While Randolph’s movement led to significant gains for African Americans, today, yet another generation has been forced to continue the struggle for Black liberation.
CUNY’s Guttman Community College undergraduates and alumni have gathered and curated approximately 200 student-produced testimonies for the Voices From the Heart of Gotham archive. By collecting and writing about these oral histories, undergraduates at Guttman have become producers of knowledge in the midst of a historic movement.
NYC’s history of systemic violence against Black communities, and powerful movements of resistance, position our city as a site for critical racial history. For us, students at CUNY, our home has become a focal point in the struggle for Black Lives. When interviewed for this project Imani Hunt, a 19 year old African-American woman living in Harlem explained: “We're in a place where so many different cultures meet and it makes us more sensitive to these issues…. People actually see how important Black Lives are here.” Given the experiences in our social networks and those of our peers, we realized these testimonies were vital to challenging the white supremacist and nativist systems that founded the United States and have proven central to the shaping of our city.
At OHS our paper will focus on testimonies narrated between 2020 and 2022, centered on themes of protest in the aftermath of highly publicized incidents of police brutality. We will unveil and honor the pain and perseverance of largely working-class communities of color as they grappled with their place in society, often taking to the streets and their devices demanding a more just home.